If You Can
by Jenwryn
Summary: Ginny/Cedric. "Is that a challenge? he inquired politely, before zipping up past her in a tight arc." Written as a birthday present for a friend.


* * *

_A/N: Written as a birthday present for my friend **siriuslyinluv71** who, when I offered her fic as a gift, asked for Ginny/Cedric. It was supposed to be drabble, but grew... Anyway. I guess this is set roughly during "The Goblet of Fire", for obvious reasons. And, naturally, the characters (blah blah) belong to J.K. Rowling, who kindly lets us play with them.__  
_

* * *

**If You Can**

* * *

He caught the tail end of her broomstick, mid-air, and the impetus of being snatched sideways so suddenly sent her spinning, but Ginny simply held on and laughed wildly until she had regained enough control to flip her own broom with such force that _he _was the one who almost fell.

"You'll have to do better than that," she teased, darting in a loop around him once and then back again.

"Is that a challenge?" he inquired politely, before zipping up past her in a tight arc.

"Probably." She laughed again and then let out a squeal, despite herself, as, this time, he managed to completely unseat her; her hands coming unstuck and her body sliding lengthways off her broomstick until she was caught, now laughing again, by the sudden realisation that she was somehow perched upon _his._

Her own broom was skipping stupidly around them.

"Oi!" she complained, slightly annoyed but completely amused, and laughingly pummelled his chest with her small, bunched fists, until he was forced to take protective measures – flying so sharply that she had to stop hitting him and grab hold of his shoulders instead, else she would have fallen off. "Cedric!" she protested, and the look of honest surprise on her face, as she grappled for him, made the Prefect draw them instantly to a steady halt. Hovering, he reached one of his hands up and placed it securely against the small of her back.

"You're alright?" he asked quickly.

Ginny felt the warmth of his hand shift through the layers of her school clothes and she grew still as it worked its way into the skin beneath her blouse. Her laughter slowed and then stopped altogether as she sat back against his hand, and looked at him looking at her. She nodded. "Yeah, of course."

Cedric looked relieved, and then smiled. "You are going to make a champion Quidditch player one day, Ginny Weasley. I can't believe your brothers never let you play."

"Well, we all know my brothers can be idiots," she informed him sagely, unwilling to break the moment that had settled down around them, but even more unwilling to restrain from mocking brothers who were to blame for her having to practise flying on the sly as a child. Besides… she wasn't entirely sure if this _was _a moment, this thing here with Cedric, although it felt rather an awful lot like one, hanging in mid-air with the boy on his broomstick and—

Cedric's knees shifted slightly against her knees, and his grey eyes locked on her eyes as though looking for some kind of signal. Ginny spent a second glancing around to locate her own broom (it had decided to hover directly beneath them, quite a good deal closer to the ground than they were, though) while she tried to collect her thoughts, and then she returned his gaze, relaxed back even more against the touch of his hand at the base of her spine, and smiled. He smiled back at her, nodded, more to himself than to her, she rather thought, and then reached up his other hand, the one that wasn't on her back, and brushed stray hair, escaped from her pigtail, away from her face, before grazing his knuckles along her cheekbone. Ginny tilted her face upwards into his touch and whispered boldly, "You can kiss me, if you'd like."

Cedric chuckled lowly. "Spoken like a true Gryffindor."

"Comes with the territory," she agreed cheekily, even though her voice was a little less steady than she would have liked. But then both his hands were at her face, and all thoughts about the state of her voice vanished as his fingers smoothed along her neck, beneath her hair, curling up against the space behind her ears, and Cedric Diggory was kissing her – kissing her, him kissing her, in mid-air, on his broomstick, in the middle of flying lessons nobody else even knew she was taking, and _Merlin but that felt good._

It also meant that he had completely reneged control of his broom which was how, some incalculable time later, she was able to swing herself out of the security of his embrace and free-fall, without warning, the distance to her own broom below.

"Catch me if you can!" laughed a well-kissed Ginny, and she sped off along the tree line.

Cedric grinned and decided that this was a challenge he could accept.


End file.
